All I'm saying is having a hacky solution is nice but you can't build communities solely on that. You need methods for the laymen. Imagine if you will they killed Half Life 1 in the same way. You bought a game but they chose to upgrade it for free. You would be stuck with that utter garbage port called Half Life Source. Like sure you can maybe find a workaround via steam console or if you had the disc you can get around it. Its just bad look.

We already heard news that valve may be forced to remove some depots because there were rumors around the times when people were "downgrading" their GTA games because the music licenses were expired and rockstar had to legally remove them (even though that is fucking annoying and sucks). I think we can't just rely on these outdated depots forever.

Note: OP of the thread just with a beehaw account now since Kbin shit the bed for me and I can't see comments.

Except its only technically available. If you want to use steam console shenanigans sure you can technically play CS GO and while there is a beta version up for CS GO it is an outdated version. Nothing is stopping Valve from having a new steam id associated with CS2. While there are servers up for both 1.38.7.9 (the one available via beta) and 1.39.4.8 (latest build) it is clear the move Steam did has basically killed that community.

To technical users they have a choice, the less savy users they don't. We shouldn't get angry at one company for doing something bad but ignore when another but more beloved company does a very similar thing but we ignore it because there is a hacky solution to it. Imagine if they did the same exact thing to CS 1 or CS Source. Hell really imagine if they fucking killed Half life 1 and replaced it with that abomination Half life 1 source. Like its cool to have an answer to possibly help but we can't expect most users to do the hacky solution.

Note: had to make a Beehaw account but same op because for some reason Kbin was shitting the bed for me since I couldn't see any comments even though I did get pinged for the notifications.

While you are technically correct, it doesn't really help. Adding extra barriers of entry and releasing a game that is suppose to be a sequel but just replacing an older version is silly. It just feels wrong to bin the old version instead of just launching a completely new instance. Like I love using steam console and I have been using it a ton especially for beat saber (because pointlessly love to kill all the mods with every update that just basically adding new dlc) but to foster a gaming community we should have lower barrier for entry because people don't want to faff about with this kind of thing. I don't know why it was too hard for Valve to keep CS GO at the last version since the easily accessible way of getting it (via the beta tab in properties) is out of date while making a new separate entry for CS2. Like imagine if they did this with CS or CS source. Kill both of them and you are stuck with just CS GO or I guess now CS2.